How to Future-Proof Your Customers With a Premortem Strategy

Every Customer Success Manager (CSM) has been there – you open your inbox and see the dreaded email: “We’ve decided not to renew.” Which makes you recall your last conversation with the customer. Were there warning signs? 

Maybe they stopped engaging with your emails, barely used key features or mentioned frustration in a support ticket that never made it to your radar. Looking back, the clues were there, but by the time the problem surfaced, it was already too late.

Reacting to churn after it happens is exhausting. Constantly putting out fires makes it hard to focus on long-term success. But what if you could spot risks before they turned into churn?

That’s where the concept of premortem comes in. Instead of analyzing what went wrong after a customer leaves, a premortem helps you identify potential risks early – while you still have time to fix them. 

Borrowed from risk management, it’s a structured way to uncover blind spots, anticipate challenges and take action before it’s too late. In this blog, we’ll break down what a premortem is, how to run one and how you can use it to strengthen customer retention.

What is a premortem?

Customer churn often feels unexpected, but in most cases, the warning signs were there all along. The challenge isn’t just spotting them – it’s recognizing them early enough to take action. That’s where a premortem comes in.

Unlike a postmortem, which examines what went wrong after a customer leaves, a premortem takes the opposite approach. In this process, teams proactively envision a scenario where a customer has already churned and then work backward to identify the factors that led to that outcome.

By thinking ahead, you can identify risks before they turn into real issues and take a proactive approach to preventing churn. This is especially important in SaaS, where customers don’t always voice dissatisfaction before making the decision to leave. 

A premortem will help surface weak spots in onboarding, engagement, product adoption and expansion – giving you ample time to fix them before they impact retention.

How to conduct a premortem in Customer Success

Running a premortem isn’t complicated, but it does require structure to be effective. The goal is to uncover potential churn risks and develop a plan to address them before they become real problems. 

By following these steps, you can make premortems a regular part of your Customer Success strategy.

1. Gather key stakeholders

Churn doesn’t happen in isolation – it’s rarely caused by just one factor or one team. That’s why it’s important to bring together key stakeholders from across the company to get a well-rounded perspective on potential risks.

The following is the list of stakeholders that should be involved in a premortem:

• Customer Success Managers: They have the closest relationships with customers and can spot early warning signs like disengagement, lack of responsiveness or shifting priorities.
• Account managers: Since they handle renewals and expansions, they understand contract terms and can provide insights into whether a customer is likely to grow with your company or churn.
• Sales teams: They know what was promised during the sales process and can help assess whether the customer’s expectations are being met.
• Product teams:  They can identify usability issues, adoption challenges, and feature gaps that might lead to frustration or lower product engagement.
• Support teams: Since they handle tickets and technical issues, they can highlight recurring problems that might be driving customers away.

By bringing these perspectives together, you create a well-rounded view of potential risks, making it easier to address issues before they lead to churn.

2. Set the scenario: Assume churn has happened

Once you have the right people in the room, set the stage for the exercise. Ask everyone to envision that a specific customer has churned six months from now.

• What went wrong?
• What signals did we miss?
• What could we have done differently to prevent it?

By encouraging everyone to take a “failure-first” approach, you are able to remove any potential bias and enable teams to think critically about potential gaps in the customer journey.

3. Identify possible reasons for churn

Next, list out the most common reasons why customers leave. These can vary by company, but some typical churn risks include:

• Poor onboarding experience: If customers don’t see value quickly, they may never fully adopt the product.
• Lack of perceived value: If customers don’t understand how the product solves their problems, it is highly likely that they won’t renew.
• Low engagement with the product: Customers who rarely log in or use key features are more likely to churn.
• Poor communication or slow responses: If customers feel ignored or unsupported, they may lose trust in the relationship.
• Unresolved technical issues: Ongoing bugs or downtime can drive customers to competitors.
• Misalignment on goals and expectations: If the product doesn’t align with what was promised during the sales process, frustration builds.

By outlining these potential risks, teams can start connecting them to real customer behaviors and warning signs.

4. Prioritize and address risks

Not all risks carry the same weight. Some issues may be minor, while others could put an entire account at risk. Therefore, to make the premortem actionable, rank risks by likelihood and impact:

• High likelihood, high impact – Needs immediate attention.
• High likelihood, low impact – Monitor closely and address if needed.
• Low likelihood, high impact – Prepare a contingency plan.
• Low likelihood, low impact – Lower priority but still worth tracking.

Once risks are ranked, develop mitigation strategies for each and assign ownership. Having a clear action plan ensures that risks aren’t just identified but actively managed.

5. Implement and track progress

The premortem doesn’t end once the meeting is over. To make it truly effective, teams need to track key indicators that could signal potential issues before they escalate. 

Identifying risks is only the first step – monitoring and addressing them over time is what prevents churn. Here are four essential steps to keep churn risks in check:

• Monitor customer health scores: A declining health score can indicate disengagement, dissatisfaction or a drop in product value. Keeping an eye on these changes helps teams intervene before it’s too late.
• Track product usage: Customers who aren’t adopting key features may not be seeing the full benefit of your product, putting them at risk of churn. Regularly reviewing usage patterns helps identify accounts that need additional support.
• Analyze sentiment: Use AI or manual analysis to detect frustration or disengagement in emails, support tickets, and survey responses. Understanding customer sentiment early allows teams to address concerns proactively.
• Schedule regular premortem reviews: Risks evolve, and customer needs change, so premortems should be an ongoing process rather than a one-time exercise. Regular check-ins ensure teams stay ahead of potential issues.

By making premortems a routine practice, teams can catch early warning signs, take proactive steps to improve retention, and ultimately build stronger customer relationships.

Next, let’s look at some of the most common churn risks and how to mitigate them effectively.

Common churn risks and how to mitigate them

Even with a solid premortem process, some churn risks are more common than others. The key is not just identifying them but having a plan in place to address them before they become real problems. 

Below are some of the most frequent churn risks and strategies to mitigate them effectively.

1. Poor onboarding

First impressions matter. If customers don’t see value quickly, they may never fully adopt the product. A confusing or inconsistent onboarding process can lead to frustration and disengagement early on. 

Standardizing onboarding with playbooks and checklists ensures every customer gets the guidance they need while tracking progress helps teams intervene when necessary.

2. Low engagement

Customers who aren’t actively using the product are at a high risk of churn. If they’re not logging in regularly or exploring key features, they may not see enough value to renew. 

To prevent this, automate engagement campaigns and use in-app surveys to check in, gather feedback, and identify any friction points before they turn into dealbreakers.

3. Misalignment on goals

If customers don’t see your product as essential to their success, they’re unlikely to renew. This often happens when expectations set during the sales process don’t align with the actual experience. 

Success plans are key to overcoming this. They help map out key milestones, track progress and ensure both the customer and your team are aligned on objectives from day one.

4. Unaddressed support issues

Slow or ineffective support can lead to frustration and eventually push customers toward competitors. If issues go unresolved, even satisfied users may start looking for alternatives. 

Centralizing customer communication and support history ensures that no request gets lost and that teams can respond quickly with the right context.

5. Low product adoption

Even if customers stay subscribed, they may not be using your product to its full potential. Low adoption of key features can reduce perceived value, making churn more likely in the long run. 

Tracking feature usage data helps teams identify at-risk accounts and proactively engage them with targeted guidance, resources, or training to improve adoption.

While these are some of the most common churn risks, every business has unique challenges. By incorporating these mitigation strategies into your premortem process, you can stay ahead of potential issues and build stronger customer relationships.

How technology can support a premortem approach

A premortem is only as effective as the insights it’s based on. When teams rely on scattered data and manual tracking, important warning signs can go unnoticed, making it harder to take action in time.

By integrating technology, teams can automate risk detection, standardize assessments and gain real-time insights – allowing them to identify and address potential churn risks before they become serious issues.

Automating churn risk detection: 

Manually tracking customer health is not only time-consuming but also prone to inconsistencies. By leveraging automation, teams can continuously monitor key metrics like health scores, NPS trends and engagement levels in real-time. 

This ensures that potential risks are identified early, allowing for proactive intervention before they lead to churn.

Standardizing risk assessment processes: 

Without a structured approach, risk assessments can vary across teams, leading to inconsistencies in how churn risks are identified and addressed. 

By using playbooks and workflows, CSMs can follow a clear, repeatable process for recognizing, prioritizing and mitigating potential risks, ensuring a more consistent and effective strategy.

Centralizing customer collaboration: 

Managing churn risks becomes challenging when customer data is spread across multiple tools, making it difficult to get a complete picture of an account’s health. 

By consolidating historical data, account notes and action items in one place, teams gain full visibility into customer interactions, allowing them to spot potential red flags early and take informed action.

Leveraging AI for proactive insights

AI-powered tools can analyze emails, support tickets and conversations to detect sentiment changes and flag at-risk accounts before issues escalate. This allows teams to intervene early rather than waiting for customers to bring up concerns.

With the help of a CSM software like Velaris, you can automate and standardize risk assessment, which helps track customer sentiment, engagement levels and churn signals in real time.

Conclusion

Preventing churn isn’t about reacting faster – it’s about recognizing risks before they become problems. A premortem helps teams take a structured approach to identifying potential failure points early, giving them the opportunity to address issues before they impact retention. 

By making premortems a regular practice, Customer Success teams can shift from firefighting to proactive risk management, leading to stronger customer relationships and better long-term outcomes.

Technology can make this process easier. With CSM software like Velaris, you can automate risk assessment, track customer sentiment and engagement levels, and centralize key insights – helping you catch early warning signs before they lead to churn.

If you’re looking for a way to spot churn risks earlier and take action sooner, book a demo today to see how Velaris can support your Customer Success strategy.

‍